The catalyst for the campaign group's launch in December was Starmer ordering his MPs not to support a parliamentary motion the month before from the SNP, which called for an 'immediate' ceasefire in Gaza. Last week's debacle in the Commons over a similar vote, again tabled by the SNP, could only have reinforced the group's mission. The charged feelings inside the Commons last week were matched by the fervour of pro-Palestinian protesters outside, some of whom projected the offensive battle cry 'From the river to the sea' on to the Elizabeth Tower. To see those words, 300ft high, underneath Big Ben must have heartened TMV's backers.

Not least its leader and pro-Palestinian activist Muhammad Jalal, who The Mail On Sunday revealed two weeks ago, led the now banned terrorist group Hizb ut-Tahrir between 2000 and 2007 under his real name Jalaluddin Patel. He has been poring over the size of Labour majorities in individual seats where those with small leads will worry for their futures if the Muslim vote in their constituencies is swung against them.

The warning to Starmer from TMV could not be clearer: 'We are not just a movement of talk. We mean business. For the first time, the Muslim community has united and is acting as one at the ballot box. We've come well prepared. We will no longer tolerate being taken for granted. We are a powerful, united force of four million acting in unison. We are focused on seats where the Muslim vote can influence the outcome. We are here for the long term.'

On one side are those who have sought to utilise the mob to harass the nation's Jewish community, intimidate its politicians and cow the police into submission. On the other are those who have tried to give a legitimate voice to the Palestinian cause, protect free speech, yet uphold basic democratic principles, and the right of our minority groups to go about their daily lives free from oppression or fear. And the mob has won.

By bowing to the threats from extremists on all sides of the debate, a line has been crossed. In fact, it was a line that was crossed the day the first pro-Palestine marches were allowed, and the streets of the nation's capital were handed over to those who sought to peddle racism, praise the Hamas rapists and murderers, and glorify in the slaughter of October 7.

Hate was allowed to parade with impunity. And we are now reaping the whirlwind. MPs are being intimidated. How they vote is literally being dictated by a fear of being physically attacked. I've spoken to one MP who now employs ex-SAS men to guard him at his regular constituency surgeries.

Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman raged against 'Islamists' who she said were 'bullying Britain into submission'. And there is obviously a very real extremist Islamist threat, as there is also a very serious threat from the extreme Right. But that represents only part of the problem. The real issue is the liberal hand-wringers on all sides of the political divide who have ceded democratic principles in a misguided attempt to safeguard liberty, and whose flawed pursuit of inclusivity has unleashed a wave of intolerance and hate.

Mrs Braverman, who was sacked by Mr Sunak after she accused police of “playing favourites” with pro-Palestinian protesters, accused Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, of “being in hock” to extremists and “taking the Speaker hostage” with a “grubby backroom deal” over the Labour amendment.

“The truth is that the Islamists, the extremists and the anti-Semites are in charge now,” she wrote. “They have bullied the Labour Party, they have bullied our institutions, and now they have bullied our country into submission.” The former home secretary accused political leaders of “burying their heads in the sand”, preferring to believe in the “illusion” of a successful multicultural society and remaining terrified of being called racist if they challenged them.

“But the law has not changed, mass extremism parades itself proudly, campuses remain dangerous places for Jews, and Labour is still rotten to the core,” she said. Mrs Braverman, who published Mr Shawcross’s review of Prevent last year, said: “We need to get over our cultural timidity to refer budding Islamists, where they are a threat, into the programme. The Government has failed if 75 per cent of MI5’s caseload consists of Islamist terrorism yet the proportion of Islamist referrals into Prevent is only 11 per cent and falling. It’s not Islamophobic to challenge Islamist fanatics – it’s a civic duty.”

This cruelty is savage enough, but survivors must also come to terms with the fact that those Palestinians they believed to be friends had betrayed them: the Hamas terrorists knew which homes to enter, who lived in them and who was away, launching an attack so meticulously planned that it could only have been undertaken with the support of trusted Gazan employees on their kibbutz. That trust is now shattered, like the lives of those hundreds of carefree young people who attended the Nova festival to never return home.

Last month, during a test off the coast of Florida with Mr Shapps and First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Ben Key on board, the HMS Vanguard crew performed a doomsday drill. A Trident 2 missile was propelled into the air, but its first stage boosters did not ignite and the 58-ton missile 'just went plop' into the sea next to the vessel and sank, The Sun revealed yesterday.

Former British Army commander Colonel Richard Kemp told the Mail: 'It's worse than an embarrassment – it's a form of undermining our own deterrent. The British nuclear deterrent is an absolute cornerstone of our defences, and if it is seen so publicly to fail then that undercuts the value of the deterrence overall.'

Trident missiles are not frequently tested, as each launch can cost up to £17 million. A previous test fire, in 2016, also ended in failure after a Trident launched from HMS Vengeance veered off course and self-destructed. It is understood the issue related to testing equipment attached to the missile, which prevented the firing of the rocket system. Officials insisted that if the missile was fired in conflict, the problem would not have occurred as the testing equipment would not be attached.

Today, he said that Germany had been hit by a "very specific situation" after Putin's full invasion of Ukraine because its energy-intensive industries were dependent on Russian gas. Germany's reliance on exports made it particularly vulnerable to changes in global trade patterns, he said, and the broader structural problem for the German economy was its lack of workers.

Without migrant workers Germany's economy would collapse, Mr Habeck said. Energy costs soared after Russia's full invasion of Ukraine two years ago. This sparked inflation, meaning that households are feeling squeezed. The country may in fact have already slid into recession, according to a warning by Germany's central bank, the Bundesbank.

The event brought together representatives from politics, police forces, technical relief organisations, fire services, academia, the media and business (particularly the energy and logistics sectors) as well as allied countries. The deployment of civilians and reservists is intended to free up military potential for operations in the east. Saxony’s Interior Minister Armin Schuster noted that Germany had already “learnt a lot” in terms of civil-military cooperation to combat “forest fires, pandemics and floods”. But “specifically on the question of leadership”, there was “no experience with war”. And a representative of the Federal Interior Ministry said Germany needed to be “less uptight” when “talking about war”.

The Bundeswehr say that civil-military cooperation is a “core element of the operations plan”. The military wants to see much closer “networking between the security agencies, disaster prevention organisations and industrial companies”. The German armed forces want to further intensify their “good working relationships” with the so-called blue-light organisations (police, fire brigade, technical relief organisation and rescue services) – relationships that have already been established through the Bundeswehr’s domestic missions conducted in “civilian crisis situations”. The “operation of Hub Germany”, which is at the heart of the transatlantic deployment against Russia (german-foreign-policy.com reported), “requires not only the Bundeswehr but also civilian partners”. Alongside interlocking cooperation with blue-light organisations, the Bundeswehr is aiming at having “similarly good working relationships” with industry.

The UK-based investigative organization Conflict Armament Research, or CAR, directly examined 290 components from remnants of a North Korean ballistic missile recovered in January from Kharkiv, Ukraine, and found that 75% of the components were designed and sold by companies incorporated in the United States, according to the report shared first with CNN.

Last year, as CNN previously reported, CAR determined that 82% of components inside Iranian-made attack drones fired by Russia inside Ukraine were made by US companies. The White House confirmed last month that Russia has been firing North Korean missiles at Ukrainian cities. North Korea has also likely provided Russia with “millions of artillery rounds” over the last year, according to a report published last week by the Pentagon’s inspector general.

Intelligence officials in Washington are increasingly concerned about the growing ties between North Korea and Russia, CNN previously reported, and the long-term implications of what appears to be a new level of strategic partnership between the two nations.

Once the outage began, federal authorities moved very rapidly to determine whether it was a cyberattack or not… I have a feeling that they will assure the general public that it was not a cyberattack no matter what they discover. In situations such as these, keeping everyone calm is often deemed more important than telling them the truth. We really are living in unprecedented times.

In all of human history, there has never been a “cyberwar”, and so we don’t know exactly what one would look like. But it is clear that our communication infrastructure is extremely vulnerable, and what we just witnessed should definitely be a wake up call for all of us.

Thursday’s incident took place 70 nautical miles from Aden, and the coalition forces are responding, according to the UKMTO, which is a monitoring service operated by the British Navy. An investigation is underway, it added. There has been no official information so far on the type of the vessel that was struck, damage, or casualties.

According to the Associated Press, ship-tracking data helped identify the vessel as a Palau-flagged cargo ship named Islander that had been coming from Thailand bound for Egypt.